Another North Florida Cave Dive video

[Dive-aholic]

Pay particular attention to the white stuff flying through the water. Those are cave fauna. Most of them are albino crayfish. There were hundreds of them!

 

[Mark Michaud SELAUSAR]

Very Cool Rob

 

[Phreatic Fanatic]

Nice!

 

[ucfdiver]

Beautiful cave, I assume this is the upstream section?

 

[w ripley]

For all of us "up north" who are hybernating this time of year, thanks.

 

[keithdiver]

Thank you for sharing Rob!

 

[karstdvr]

Sorry I couldn't see your video. It is amazing life abounds in these cave systems,but you have to change your perceptual view of the caves. Put your light on extremely wide angle vs focused,and look through the water column,using the blackness as contrast. I have been doing fauna counts of several cave systems for 6 years,and it never ceases to amaze me. The other thing that amazes me is what is really known about these species-not much. What is the life span of those larger crayfish. It is thought to be older than your grandfather. When there is flood with an influx of bacteria that lowers dissolved oxygen,where do these species go? The cool thing is there is an effort to get some pieces to the puzzle to help answer these questions. On another note,Rob's video could have been called "Debbie Does NFL Caves",because he missed two crayfish engaged in the act of love.

PS Rob on a sidenote,I was going insane trying to seperate isopods,amphipods,and very newly hatched crayfish-all about the same size.

 

[LiteHedded]

Sorry I couldn't see your video. It is amazing life abounds in these cave systems,but you have to change your perceptual view of the caves. Put your light on extremely wide angle vs focused,and look through the water column,using the blackness as contrast. I have been doing fauna counts of several cave systems for 6 years,and it never ceases to amaze me. The other thing that amazes me is what is really known about these species-not much. What is the life span of those larger crayfish. It is thought to be older than your grandfather. When there is flood with an influx of bacteria that lowers dissolved oxygen,where do these species go? The cool thing is there is an effort to get some pieces to the puzzle to help answer these questions. On another note,Rob's video could have been called "Debbie Does NFL Caves",because he missed two crayfish engaged in the act of love.

PS Rob on a sidenote,I was going insane trying to seperate isopods,amphipods,and very newly hatched crayfish-all about the same size.

dead maybe. we did a dive recently and saw tons of dead ones

 

[CaptRam]

nice- but i missed seeing any lines?

 

[karstdvr]

dead maybe. we did a dive recently and saw tons of dead ones

This is true,there are dead ones. But,after a few weeks after a flood event you will see the reappearance of crayfish,and many of the fully matured adult crayfish,and knowing they have fair long life cycle to generate this size,the question that begs to be asked is where do they go? Interesting,our data shows that following a flood at Peacock,it takes approx 6 months for population trends to return to preflood status.